Senior Specialist, Python Software Engineer

At McLaren, our mission is to set the standard for high performance in sport. Everyone, in every part of the team, has a role to play. So if you want to test your ideas with the world watching and measure your progress in milliseconds, you belong here. High performance starts with you.

Purpose of the Role: The purpose of this role is to deliver performance projects for McLaren F1 Racing using the Python language and its ecosystem of tools and frameworks. As a senior member of the development team, you will provide technical leadership on a range of projects, contribute to initiatives beyond your own team, and mentor less experienced team members.

Role Dimensions: The Software & Data Science department is responsible for the analysis, design, and delivery of bespoke software tools and methodologies which help improve our Formula 1 car's performance. As a Senior Python Software Engineer, your role will combine elements of technical leadership and agile project delivery. You’ll be involved in all stages of the development life cycle for new and existing software platforms that leverage Python and the Python ecosystem, from initial analysis through to deployment, monitoring, and support. With an expert perspective on systems architecture, you’ll design fast and easy to use applications that delight our end users, and which enable data integration and composability in the wider ecosystem of racing software. You’ll work on long-term strategic objectives and platforms, while delivering quick turnaround for mission critical features in a fast-paced environment supporting our aerodynamic development processes, as well as simulation tools, web applications, and platform services. Due to the nature of track and tunnel operations, some flexibility to work out of office hours and weekends may be required. The role will be primarily based at the McLaren Technology Centre with a proportion of the time spent working from home.

Principal Accountabilities:

• Contribute to the team’s technical roadmap, ensuring alignment with the priorities driven by the business/team manager.
• Planning a year in advance, while remaining flexible and adapting to changing circumstances.
• Deliver high quality features across all stages of the development life cycle: initial analysis, design, implementation, build, integration, testing, deployment, debugging and support.
• Take ownership and lead on projects to deliver solutions on time and budget.
• Capture and understand project requirements, define specifications, and architect robust, scalable, and testable software and system solutions.
• Work collaboratively with your team, the department, and stakeholders in line with the Software & Data Science Guiding Principles.
• Accurately estimate activity timescales and provide clear and regular progress reports.
• Raise awareness of and mitigate against potential technical risks.
• Confidently analyse and overcome technical challenges with workable and innovative solutions.
• Contribute to and maintain consistent standards and approaches adopted by the team.
• Efficiently manage your workload.
• Keep up to date with the latest software development technologies and methodologies.
• Freely share knowledge, insight, best practice, and ideas.

Job Requirements

Knowledge, Skills and Experience:

Essential:

• BSc in Computer Science or equivalent discipline (2:1 or above) or equivalent industry experience.
• Extensive commercial experience delivering projects using agile/lean methodologies.
• A strong full stack software development background with an understanding of how to engineer quality software.
• Considerable commercial development experience using Python and the Python ecosystem, including:

• Experience building modern enterprise-grade Python applications (using features such as class and package modules, generators, asyncio, cython, etc).
• Experience with web frameworks like Django and Flask.
• Experience delivering best practices for deployment and package management (wheel, pip, pypi, Sonatype).
• Using git in a collaborative environment (pull requests, branches).
• Experience with relational and document databases (MySQL, SQL Server, and MongoDB).
• Experience building maintainable codebases leveraging design patterns and modern repository structures (monorepo, modular monolith).
• Using ALM tools like GitHub to organise and track your work.
• High competency in written and oral English language.

Desirable:

• Experience developing systems with Kafka and stream processing techniques.
• Experience with Linux and running containers on Kubernetes.
• Experience with pandas, numpy, SciKit, and other analytical packages.
• Experience designing distributed microservice based architectures.
• Strong background in mathematics, statistics, or mechanical engineering.
• Experience with QT Python thick client applications.
• Web development experience using technologies such as JavaScript, TypeScript, and React.
• Experience using cloud technologies e.g. Microsoft Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud.

What can McLaren offer? We constantly strive to be better tomorrow than we are today. Our ambition is to be the most pioneering and exhilarating racing team in the world, and our collective task is to set the standards for high performance in sport. We show up every day with energy and enthusiasm, ready to play our part. We encourage and support diversity, equity and inclusion. We will actively promote a culture that values difference and eliminates discrimination in our workplace. McLaren Racing is based at the iconic McLaren Technology Centre (MTC) near Woking. Here at McLaren, we offer hybrid working with 3 days a week based in the MTC. Our state of the art, sustainable campus offers many facilities including a gym, restaurant and indoor and outdoor break-out areas, as well as direct access to park and common land. The MTC is connected to Woking mainline station via regular shuttle buses, from which London Waterloo is a 30 minute train ride. We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including private healthcare, car schemes, life insurance and generous pension contributions.